Sunday, April 19, 2015

Hebrews 1

This is a quick draft of Sunday's sermon. Hopefully I'll eventually replace it with a more polished version.

It’s always
interesting to me that so many people talk about having a relationship with
Jesus. This is a relationship that’s often
presented as the means of salvation:
that we are saved by having a relationship with Jesus. Right?
Have you heard that? Of
course. But what kind of relationship
with Jesus is the Bible actually talking about?
I would think that would be a very important question.

There’s also
a big emphasis in Christian talk on loving Jesus. But if we really love Jesus, shouldn’t we be interested
in learning more about his point of view, and about his identity and
authority, his priorities and purposes?
Let’s just forget about religion for a moment and think about
relationships in general. If you’re
interested in someone, you want to find out all you can about them, right? You’ve probably experienced being in love. What happens?
You become fascinated with everything and anything about that other
person. And the more you learn about that
person, the closer you feel to that person and the closer you want to get to that
person. And when you do, your whole
world is affected, your life is different.

Do we feel
that way about Jesus? Are we amazed by
him? Do we want to learn everything we
can about him? Or is ours a relationship
that has lost its spark? Is it a
relationship of the past more than it is of the present?

I think this
is what Jesus was talking about when he warned the church at Ephesus that it
had left its first love, and that this was a dangerous thing (Rev. 2:4). Because when we get too far away from our
first love of Jesus, the focus turns back to ourselves again and we become
self-centered rather than God-centered.
Our concerns return to earthly things rather than heavenly things. We begin to set our eyes on men again rather
than on God.

But the love
the Bible is talking about is not just an emotional feeling. It’s not a romantic love, though people often
confuse it with romantic love. That’s because
in English, just like in Chinese, there’s only one word for love. But the love of the Bible is a very specific
type of love. It’s a serving love: agape
love; not a romantic love, which is a completely different word in Greek. An agape
relationship with Jesus is a relationship in which you want to serve him
because he is God, and because he is so worthy of our service and our worship
and our praise.

In fact, in
the languages of the Bible, service and worship are the same exact word (avodah in Hebrew, latreuo in Greek). Worship
is service and service is worship.
Singing songs is not the only kind of worship. There are many kinds of worship and
service of God. The true love of the
Bible is a self-humbling love, a laying down of our lives type of love, and an
exalting of Jesus. We are to lay aside
our own interests and concerns and fill our lives with God and with the love he
has for all people.

We can
worship God and serve God in everything we do all day long, even in things we
may not think specifically of as Christian:
like in our daily work, even in our secular jobs (Col. 3:23). Because
we can serve Jesus everywhere, and be a testimony for Jesus everywhere.

But the
place we meet Jesus most clearly and directly is in the Bible. The Bible is where we can retrain our minds
to think more like Jesus thinks. It’s
where we shed our false ideas and replace them with God’s ideas: or at least that’s what should happen when we
read the Bible. It’s where we get to know
more purely and perfectly what Jesus is like and what’s important to him. And it’s where our spirits are awed by the
majesty of God—or at least they should be if we’re reading with understanding.

In Hebrew
thinking, study of the Bible is a form of worship. It’s a way of exalting God and building up
the things of God in our lives. In fact,
you could say that study of the Word of God is one of the highest forms of
worship. Because it’s where we learn to
discover the value and the worth of God in our world and in our lives. But this only happens if we let the Bible
challenge us, and let it change our lives.

One of the
books in the New Testament where we see most clearly the value of study as a
form of worship is in the book of Hebrews.
Because here, the Old Testament is used for deep and beautiful insights
into the Word of God: insights into who
Jesus is, and who he should be to us—beautiful life-changing insights into serving
and worshipping God. Of course, this
same process of revealing the truth of the Old Testament can be found all
through the New Testament.

All
the early Christians taught from the Old Testament, since that was the only
Christian Bible for many years. But
sometimes, today, when we read the New Testament, that deeper layer of meaning
is hidden to our eyes. Why is that? In part, it’s because the New Testament, like
the old rabbis, often just hints to verses in the Old Testament. A word or two was all that was needed to
remind everyone of a particular passage.
But unfortunately for us as Gentiles, these hints are easy to overlook,
especially since we’re often not that familiar with the details of the Old
Testament. And so over the years,
Christians have often overlooked or minimized this important heritage.

This is why
the book of Hebrews is so important. Its
many quotes from the Old Testament are clear and direct: you can’t miss them. And because of this, it helps us understand many
of the fascinating ways in which Jesus is found in the Old Testament that we
might otherwise miss. These pictures of
Jesus in the Old Testament are important, because they help us understand him
better and appreciate him more in our lives.
And since they are prophecies given hundreds of years before Jesus’
birth, they also help us to see the majesty and the incredibly precise accuracy
of God’s plan in our world and in our lives.

So let’s
turn to the book of Hebrews for a time of worship as we study God’s word! Amen?

One of the
most fascinating chapters in Hebrews is the very first chapter. In just a few sentences, it quickly and
beautifully exalts Jesus as the Son of God through an outpouring of quotes from
the Old Testament. It begins in Heb.
1:1: “God, having spoken many times and
in many ways to the fathers long ago by the prophets.” Here we see right away the importance of
God’s voice speaking through the prophets to the Christian message.

Heb.
1:2: “in these last days has spoken to
us by a Son, whom he made heir of all things, through whom he also made the
ages (aeons);”

God spoke
before by the prophets, now he speaks through his Son. This Son is the one through whom God “made
the ages.” What does this mean? In many translations, it says “through whom
he made the world.” (Chinese = all
worlds) But the word used here, aeons,
literally means ages: long periods of
time. So how do you make an age before
it begins? That seems to be the problem
the translators are having here. But
this is a good opportunity for us to expand our thinking according to the
thinking of the Bible. What it means is
that God created not just time and space, but he also created a plan for what
would happen in them. That plan and the
outworking of that plan is a series of ages in which different things have
happened or are going to happen in the future.
We can talk about the age of the Patriarchs: Noah and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We can talk about the age of David and
Solomon. We can talk about the age of
the New Testament and the Church Age.
And we can talk about the Messianic Age that is yet to come. All of these ages and more were included in
the plan that God made at the creation, a plan that is built into the creation
itself.

But how did
he do that? How did he build his plan for
the ages into the creation? In our bodies, we have something called
DNA. This is God’s plan for our
lives. That DNA gives instructions for
how our bodies will be when we are babies, how we will be when we are
teenagers, how we will be when we are adults, and even how we will be when we
are elderly. That plan, which governs
all these different periods of time in our lives, is all right there at the
moment we’re born.

In the same
way, when God created the heavens and the earth, the “DNA” of the universe
already held God’s eternal plan, which included his plan for all the ages that
would be required to make that plan happen.
Where was that DNA located? In
the Word of God itself that created the universe and that continues to hold the
universe together and energize the universe right now. And through that Word being communicated to
us by the prophets and through God’s Son, we now have large pieces of God’s
eternal plan right there in our Bibles, a plan that is making all things work
together to accomplish God’s purposes.

That Word of
God, revealed to us as God’s Son, is the “heir of all things,” Hebrews says. What does that mean? In Jewish thinking, this implies that Jesus
is in the position of the firstborn son of God.
In Jewish culture, the firstborn son is the son that inherits the double
portion, which means he inherits twice as much as any other brothers. He would be the one to continue living in the
family’s home and own the farm. So the
firstborn was the most important heir. But
since Jesus is the only natural Son of God, he is the heir of all things. But this expression also tells us that he is
of the nature of God, since he is in the relationship of a son to God his
Father. To inherit from God in this way,
he must also be God.

Heb.
1:3: “who being the radiance of the
glory (of God) and an exact representation of his being, and upholding all
things by the word of his power, having accomplished the cleansing of sins, sat
down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (i.e. the Father),”

There’s an
awful lot going on in that verse! The
first part we’ve looked at before: “who being
the radiance of the glory.” It’s a quote
from—where, do you remember? Eze. 1:28. This is the verse that tells us that Jesus is
the one sitting in the chariot of God who is God and speaks as God, yet who has
the appearance of a man. This is what
makes that chapter in Ezekiel so dangerous to the rabbis, because it is so
clearly talking about Jesus as the Son of God.
Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God: he is the shining out of the glory of God to
us in a way that we can see with our eyes.
And this shining out that we can see is an exact representation of who God is.

The Greek
word used here is “character” which gives us the English word “character.” It was originally used of a die or mold used
for making coins, and so refers to making an exact copy of something. Jesus is an exact representation of God to
us. As he said to the disciples, “the
one who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9b). But not only does Jesus represent God to us,
as God he keeps the universe from crumbling into dust. As it says in Heb. 1:3b: “Upholding all things by the word of his
power.”

Have you
ever wondered what keeps the universe going?
If the universe is really billions and billions of years old, as the
scientists claim, why hasn’t it run out of energy by now? Why are the stars and planets still going
around? Why are the electrons still
spinning around in their atoms? This
last one is actually a difficult problem for the physicists. Why do those electrons still keep spinning
around so fast? Shouldn’t they have slowed
down by now? That’s a problem for which
they have no solution. It’s led some to
say that there must be some invisible force providing energy to the universe to
keep it all going. Some are even willing
to call this energy God. Well, it seems
the Bible knew all about this a long time ago—and it’s got the answer right
here.

Jesus, as
the Word of God, is what keeps the universe humming along: “upholding all things by the word of his
power.” He is also the one who has
cleansed us from our sins by his death on the cross (“having accomplished the
cleansing of sins”), as we talked about recently. And after that, in victory, he ascended into
heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, that is, the Father
(“sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high”).

Heb.
1:4: “having become as much better than
the angels as the name he inherited is more excellent than theirs.”

This brings
up the main theme of this chapter: the
superiority of Jesus to the angels. In
the early days, it wasn’t so clear exactly what Jesus’ position was in the
spiritual universe. Some people actually
worshipped angels, which includes those who worshipped the false gods, which
according to the Bible are fallen angels.
Some people thought Jesus was equal to the angels—some still do today
(like the Jehovah’s Witnesses); or that he was an angelic being. But the writer of Hebrews wants us to know
very clearly that Jesus is far above the angels. So what is the name mentioned here that Jesus
inherited? An inheritance is something
you get from your father, so this refers to his name, “the Son of God,” as we will
see in the next verse. So which name is
greater? Being an angel of God, which
means a messenger of God, or the Son of God?
Obviously the Son of God is a far greater name, and this alone shows us
how much greater Jesus is than the angels.

Heb.
1:5: “For to which of the angels did he
ever say, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’? And again, ‘I will be a Father to him, and he
will be a Son to me’?”

This is the
beginning of that outpouring of Bible verses we see in Hebrews. Here there are two in one verse! Where does this first quote come from, “You
are my Son, today I have begotten you”?
Of course, it’s what God said over Jesus at his baptism. But why was that important? Where does it come from in the Old Testament? Psa. 2:7b.
This is the chapter in the book of Psalms that describes the Son of God,
mentioned here, as the Messiah (Psa. 2:2).
Psalm 2 was very popular, so this verse was well known to people (Psa.
2:7). It’s what provided the proof that
the Messiah was the Son of God, and that puts him far above the angels.

And what
about the second quote in Hebrews 1:5b (“I will be a Father to him, and he will
be a son to me”)? Where is that
from?

2 Sam. 7:14a. This is the Messianic prophecy spoken over
David by the prophet Nathan: the Davidic
covenant made by God with King David.

Do you
remember this section? (2 Sam. 7:12-13). Some say that this prophecy refers to
Solomon, the son of David. But Solomon fell
away from God in his old age. Solomon’s
kingdom did not endure forever. So
that’s why in the time of Jesus, the people were looking for a Davidic Messiah (“Hosanna
to the Son of David”)—because the prophecy had not yet been fulfilled!

Here’s the
next quote in Hebrews: Heb. 1:6: “But when he again brings the firstborn into
the world, he says: ‘And let all the
angels of God prostrate themselves (in worship) before him.’”

What is this
talking about? It’s introduced by
calling Jesus the firstborn. This is
just another way to say that Jesus is the heir of God, as we saw already in vs.
2. But here it’s talking about when God
will bring Jesus into the world “again”:
in other words, the second coming.
Where does this quote come from in the Bible?

Psa.
97:7. This is where it starts getting
really interesting. Because Hebrews
tells us that Psa. 97 is talking about the return of Jesus—that this is how it
was understood in the earliest Church.
Now that’s very exciting, because this is not a chapter that most people
today think of as a prophetic chapter.
So we’re going to get some new insight into the Bible. The version of the Bible that’s being quoted
here is the Septuagint (the LXX), the Old Greek version of the Bible, which was
the Old Testament for most of the early believers in Jesus.

In the
Septuagint, there’s a very interesting title given to this psalm: “For David, when his land is established.” Now these titles were given to the Psalms
many, many years after the Psalms were written, so this was long after the
historical King David was dead. So then what
David did they have in mind when they wrote this? In many of the prophets, David is used as a name
of the Messiah. But was the land of
Israel established under the control of Jesus when he came? Not at all.
So this cannot be talking about the first coming of Messiah, when he was
reviled and crucified, but the second coming of the Messiah, when his land will
be established!

So let’s read through this psalm the way the
early Church did:

Psa. 97:1:
They understood this to be talking about the reign of Messiah in the
Messianic kingdom when Jesus returns.

Psa. 97:3: “Fire will go before him and will set his
enemies ablaze all around.”

In Hebrew,
the verbs here can be understood either as present or future. Many translations today put them in the
present tense. (Chinese = present?) But the Septuagint and the early Church
translated and understood them as future.
When will fire go before the Lord like this? The judgment that will come on the world when
Jesus returns. This gives a completely
different and very powerful meaning to this psalm!

Psa. 97:4: “His lightnings will light up the world; the
earth will see and will writhe (in fear).”

Here, too,
the Hebrew was understood to be talking about the future. When will this happen? The judgment at the return of Jesus, or what
the book of Revelation calls the outpouring of the wrath of God.

Psa.
97:5: “Mountains will melt like wax
before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth.” Again, future.

Psa.
97:6: “The heavens will declare his
righteousness and all the peoples will see his glory.” Again, future.

What is this
talking about? The signs in the heavens
that Jesus talked about! And who is the “glory”
of God that all the peoples will see?
Jesus—just like we saw in Heb. 1:3!
All of this was understood to refer to the return of Jesus in the early
church and in the book of Hebrews. So if
the book of Hebrews understands that this psalm is talking about the return of
Jesus (‘when he comes again’), how do you thing we should understand
it? And here’s where the verse appears
that Hebrews quotes:

Psa.
97:7: “All those serving idols will be
ashamed, those glorying in worthless things; prostrate yourselves before him,
all you gods.”

This, too,
is talking about the time of Jesus’ return, just as Paul says in Philippians
2:10: “every knee will bend.”

So who are
these gods that will bow before Jesus? These
are the false gods, which the New Testament tells us are actually fallen
angels. That’s why in the old Greek, and
also in the book of Hebrews, this is translated angels: that all the angels will bow down before
Jesus. If all the angels (which includes
all the false gods) will bow down to Jesus, he is clearly superior to them all.

The next
verse in Hebrews says: Heb. 1:7: “And to the angels he says, ‘The one making
his messengers (his angels) spirits and his servants (or ministers) a flame of
fire.’” Where does this quote come
from? Psa. 104:4. This is in a psalm that celebrates the
awesome wonder of God’s creation.

Psa.
104:2: “wrapping yourself with light as
a cloak, stretching out the heavens (shamayim)
like the cloth of a tent,”

Wrapping
yourself with light...what is that talking about? The first day of the creation, when God said,
let there be light. Then what happened
on the second day? He made the expanse,
the firmament, that separated the waters below (mayim) from the waters above (shamayim;
Gen. 1:6,7). That’s what it’s talking
about here in Psa. 104:2b: that he
stretched out the heavens (shamayim) like
the cloth of a tent.

What does
that image mean? Tents in Bible days
were made out of black goat’s hair cloth.
This was a very loose fabric that allowed the tent to breathe a
little. This left little spaces between
the threads. The when the sun was
shining, inside the tent you could see thousands of dots of light shining
through, just the way it used to look in the night sky.

Psa.
104:3: “the one laying the beams of his
upper rooms in the waters, the one making dark clouds his chariot, the one who
goes about on the wings of the Spirit,”

This is
still talking about the second day of the creation. Where are God’s upper rooms? In what waters? The waters over there = sha-mayim, the waters of the heavens. Dark clouds are his chariot: just like we saw in Ezekiel 1: the chariot of God. In it, he travels around on the wings of the
Spirit.

This is another
beautiful description of the Spirit of God as a bird, just like in Gen.
1:2. Do you remember when we talked
about that? The Spirit “hovered” over
the waters, a word used to describe the flight of a bird. The Hebrew word is merehephet, hovering or fluttering like a bird. This is also why the Spirit descended “like a
dove” on Jesus at his baptism (Matt. 3:16): it’s the same image.

For
messengers, God uses the spirit beings we call angels today. For his servants, he uses flaming fire: the fire of his judgment, like with Sodom and
Gomorrah, and the fire to come.

This mention
of making angels, here in Psalm 104, is right in the middle of talking about
the second day of creation. Remember Psa.
104:2b: “stretching out the
heavens”? What this means is that we
have here the answer to the age-old question, when did God make the
angels? On the second day of the
creation, the day that God created the heavens.
This makes perfect sense. After
all, who are those upper rooms for, if not for the angels? I thought for a while I was the first to discover
this, but as it turns out, the rabbis already taught it long ago, using these
same verses (Rabbi Jochanan). The angels
were made on the same day that the heavens were made.

This matches
Job 38:4-6 exactly. Now notice, here in
Job, it’s talking about the creation of the earth. On what day did this happen? On what day was the earth created? The third day. That, Job says, is the day on which the angels
shouted in joy: on the third day, during
the creation of the earth (Job 38:7).
Why didn’t they do it on the first day, when God created light, or on
the second day, when he made the heavens?
Because they weren’t made yet!
They were only made on the second day, when they were created with the
heavens.

What we’ve
seen here in Psalm 104 is a description of the angels, the spiritual messengers
of God. So how does this compare to what
God says about his Son? Hebrews uses
another quote:

Heb. 1:8-9: “But to the Son, 'Your throne, God, (is) for
the age of the age (forever and ever), and the scepter of righteousness (is
the) scepter of your kingdom. You have
loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; because of this, God, your God, has
anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions."

Most people
when they read these verses don’t get it at all. What’s the message here? Why does he use this passage? Well, first of all, where is it from?

Psa.
45:6-7. This is another fantastic
prophetic psalm. But again, like Psa.
104, it’s hidden to most people who read it today. So let’s take a closer look. Here again, we can be helped by the title
that was given much later to the psalm. The
Hebrew title is usually translated, “for the music director,” or something like
that (Psa. 45:1). But the Septuagint interprets
this to mean, “for the end,” in other words, for the endtimes. So this, too, was taken as an endtimes
Messianic psalm by the early Church.

It begins:
Psa. 45:1: “My heart is stirred
up with a good word; I am telling my (literary) works to a king, my tongue is
the pen of a skilled scribe.”

So the psalm
is addressed to a king. But what king is
that?

Psa.
45:2: “You are more beautiful than the
sons of man/Adam; grace has been poured out with your lips, therefore God has
blessed you forever.”

What kind of
king is this that is more beautiful than human beings? This is certainly not describing an ordinary person. Soon after that comes the verse mentioned in
Hebrews:

Psa. 45:6: “Your
throne, God, is forever and ever; a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of
your kingdom.”

Now wait a
minute! A moment ago, the psalmist was
talking to the king, this strangely beautiful king, who is more than
human. But now, suddenly, he addresses
this king as God! How can the king also be
God?

Psa.
45:7: “You have loved righteousness and
hated wickedness, therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of
gladness more than your companions.”

Whoah! Here he does it again. He’s speaking to one he calls “God,” but then
he says, “your God has anointed you.” Who
is the God of God that anointed God?
This is one of those amazing places in the Bible where the plurality of
God is clearly taught. There’s a God in
heaven, and then there’s a God who is a righteous king on earth. And the God in heaven has anointed this God
on earth with oil. Who can this be
talking about? Well of course, it’s a
beautiful description of the relationship of the Father God and God the Son,
Jesus the Messiah. And as we saw, it’s a
prophecy of Jesus’ reign on the earth as Messiah when he returns. No angel is ever spoken of this way in the
Bible.

The next
Bible quote in the book of Hebrews is Heb. 1:10-12: “And, ‘At the beginning, you, Lord, laid the
foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands; 11
they will perish, but you remain; and they all as a garment will become old, 12
and like a cloak you will roll them up, and as a garment they will be changed; but
you are the same, and your years will not come to an end.’” What does this have to do with Jesus? Well, where are these verses from?

From Psa.
102:25-26. That this psalm concerns the
end of time is stated directly in the psalm itself: Psa. 102:18: “Let this be
written for the last generation, and a people to be created will praise the
LORD.” We’ve talked briefly before about
this amazing last generation: a
generation made up of all generations.
And that language is used right here in this psalm, too:

Psa. 102:24: “I say, ‘My God, do not make me go up in the midst of my
days; your years are with a generation
of generations.’” (In Chinese: the ages of infinity[?])

Jesus
appearing as the glory of God is also here:

Psa.
102:16: “For the LORD will build up Zion;
he will appear in his glory.”

This verse,
too, is understood as future in the Septuagint (the Hebrew can go either
way). Do you recognize that key word,
“glory.” Jesus is the glory of God that
will appear in the endtimes. And the
Messianic Kingdom is also mentioned:

Psa. 102:22: "At the gathering of the peoples
together, and the kingdoms, to serve the LORD.”

Then it
talks about what will happen after Jesus’ return: that the heavens will perish, but he and his
servants will continue forever (Psa. 102:28).
Here’s that DNA of the universe again, already speaking forth the things
that will be in the future.

Hebrews 1
continues with one last quote: Heb.
1:13: “But to which of the angels did he
ever say, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your
feet’”?

Where is
this from? Psalm 110:1, one of the
favorite verses of Jesus. Jesus liked to
focus on the first part of this verse:
“A (prophetic) declaration of the LORD to my Lord.” Jesus accepted that this was a psalm of
David, as it says in the psalm’s title, “a psalm of David.” But if David wrote this psalm, who was it, in
addition to God, that he was addressing as Lord?—for there are two lords
mentioned here. The common understanding
about this verse was that the first Lord is God and the second Lord is the
Messiah. But if the Messiah is David’s
descendant, as everyone believed and as the Bible teaches, how can David call
him Lord? Do you call your child or your
grandchild “Sir”? No of course not. The elder should get more respect. But yet David calls the Messiah “Lord”? How can that be? Only if the Messiah is superior to David,
which implies that the Messiah is more than an ordinary man. This verse hints to the fact that the Messiah
is God. God never spoke this way to any
angel. Instead, angels are servants of
God’s people, as it says in vs. 14:

Heb.
1:14: “Are they not all ministering
spirits sent out for ministry on behalf of those (who are) about to inherit
salvation?”

The angels
are sent out by God on our behalf, in other words, the angels serve us. This implies that we are greater than they
are. So if we are greater than
the angels, how much greater than that is the Son of God! The Son of God is exalted far above any human
being, and therefore above every angel, too.

Hebrews 1 is
such an awesome chapter in giving us insight into the Jewish Roots of our
faith. It lets us see clearly the
reasoning process that underlies the whole of the New Testament. Everything, every word, every phrase, comes
from God’s revelation in the Old Testament, and is made clear for us in the
New. But here in Hebrews, it’s easier
for us to see. It’s that DNA of God that
stretches back to the creation and forward to the end of time: and every little piece fits perfectly
together.

But the book
of Hebrews is not finished: it’s just
getting warmed up. Another time, God
willing, we’ll see why it was so important to clarify where Jesus stood in
relationship to the angels.

Do you feel
like you’ve spent a little time in worshipful study today? Do you feel like you’ve been brought a little
closer to the mind of God? I think it’s
just amazing how all these tiny parts of the Bible match up so perfectly
together, even though they were written in different generations by different
people, some of them even living in different countries. If God is so concerned about the tiny details
in the Bible, that gives us some insight into his character. He’s an expert on the details. This is what Jesus was trying to tell us when
he said that God knows the number of hairs on your head.

Nothing is
overlooked by God. He knows every tiny
detail of what’s going on in your life.
And he’s always available to us to help us with those details. There’s no part of your life that’s too big
or small for God to be in it. That
doesn’t mean that everything in life always goes the way we want it to. But it’s going the way he wants
it. And it’s much better to get in line
with God’s program than to fight against it.
Because his will is going to be done.
Period. There’s no getting around
it. His will is built right into the
universe around us. Fortunately, being a
wonderful Father, he also sends us times of refreshing and encouragement
despite the difficulties of life. He
really does answer prayer, even though sometimes he says no, or not yet. But even that kind of answer is for our good
in the long run.

What area of
life do you need God in today? He’s
already there, waiting for you to call on him, waiting for you to see him in
the midst of all the details of life. Let’s
pray...

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About New Church

Join us at New Church in Taichung, Taiwan! The messages posted here are the Sunday messages shared with the church by Pastor Jeff Harrison. For more information about the church, click on the Church Info or Facebook Group links under the photo at the top of this page. For more information about Jeff, check out the link to his ministry website (To The Ends).